背景:世界卫生组织已将健康的社会决定因素(SDoH)描述为个人出生的条件,活,工作,和年龄。这些条件可以分为3个相互关联的级别,称为宏观(社会),mesolevel(community),和微观(个体)决定因素。SDoH的范围超出了生物医学水平,仍然需要连接其他领域,如经济学,公共政策,和社会因素。
目的:提供一种可计算的人工制品,将健康数据与涉及不同水平决定因素的概念联系起来,可能会提高我们对SDoH对人群影响的理解。通过决定因素和生物学因素之间的明确联系,对SDoH进行建模可能有助于减少文献中现有的空白。这反过来可以使研究人员和临床医生更好地理解数据并通过使用语义链接发现新知识。
方法:开发了一种实验本体来表示对SDoH的社会和经济特征的知识。分析了来自27个文献来源的信息,以收集概念并使用Web本体语言进行编码,版本2(OWL2)和Protégé。四名评估人员使用自然语言翻译独立审查了本体论公理。评估的分析和基本形式本体论的选定术语用于创建经过修订的本体论,该本体论具有从宏观到微观决定因素的广泛知识概念。
结果:文献检索确定了每个决定因素级别的几个讨论主题。以卫生政策为中心的宏观决定因素的出版物,收入不平等,福利,和环境。与中水平决定因素有关的文章讨论了工作,工作条件,社会心理因素,社会经济地位,结果,食物,贫穷,住房,和犯罪。最后,为检查性别的微观决定因素找到的来源,种族,种族,和行为。概念是从文献中收集的,用于产生由383个类组成的本体,109个对象属性,和748个逻辑公理。推理测试显示没有不一致的公理。
结论:这个本体论对异构的社会和经济概念进行建模,以代表SDoH的各个方面。SDoH的范围是广阔的,虽然本体论很广泛,它仍处于早期阶段。根据我们目前的理解,这种本体代表了第一次尝试专注于现有本体目前未涵盖的知识概念。未来的方向将包括进一步扩大本体论与其他生物医学本体论的联系,包括粒度语义的对齐。
BACKGROUND: Social determinants of health (SDoH) have been described by the World Health Organization as the conditions in which individuals are born, live, work, and age. These conditions can be grouped into 3 interrelated levels known as macrolevel (societal), mesolevel (community), and microlevel (individual) determinants. The scope of SDoH expands beyond the biomedical level, and there remains a need to connect other areas such as economics, public policy, and social factors.
OBJECTIVE: Providing a computable artifact that can link health data to concepts involving the different levels of determinants may improve our understanding of the impact SDoH have on human populations. Modeling SDoH may help to reduce existing gaps in the literature through explicit links between the determinants and biological factors. This in turn can allow researchers and clinicians to make better sense of data and discover new knowledge through the use of semantic links.
METHODS: An experimental ontology was developed to represent knowledge of the social and economic characteristics of SDoH. Information from 27 literature sources was analyzed to gather concepts and encoded using Web Ontology Language, version 2 (OWL2) and Protégé. Four evaluators independently reviewed the ontology axioms using natural language translation. The analyses from the evaluations and selected terminologies from the Basic Formal Ontology were used to create a revised ontology with a broad spectrum of knowledge concepts ranging from the macrolevel to the microlevel determinants.
RESULTS: The literature search identified several topics of discussion for each determinant level. Publications for the macrolevel determinants centered around health policy, income inequality, welfare, and the environment. Articles relating to the mesolevel determinants discussed work, work conditions, psychosocial factors, socioeconomic position, outcomes, food, poverty, housing, and crime. Finally, sources found for the microlevel determinants examined gender, ethnicity, race, and behavior. Concepts were gathered from the literature and used to produce an ontology consisting of 383 classes, 109 object properties, and 748 logical axioms. A reasoning test revealed no inconsistent axioms.
CONCLUSIONS: This ontology models heterogeneous social and economic concepts to represent aspects of SDoH. The scope of SDoH is expansive, and although the ontology is broad, it is still in its early stages. To our current understanding, this ontology represents the first attempt to concentrate on knowledge concepts that are currently not covered by existing ontologies. Future direction will include further expanding the ontology to link with other biomedical ontologies, including alignment for granular semantics.